The infra-red heater assembly relates to heaters in general and more specifically to heaters that raise the ambient temperature in a room to over 140° F.
Hotels have people check in from all walks of life. Some hotel guests bring additional guests with them that stay beyond check out time. The additional guests include bed bugs among other insect. Cities with large numbers of hotel rooms report bed bug infestations: a significant problem in Las Vegas, New York City and Hawaii. The bed bugs arrive on a few hotel guests or their luggage and then the environment of the hotel allows the bed bugs to thrive. The bed bugs affect hotels of all star levels.
In recent years, hotels have fought the bed bugs in various ways. One prior art method of fighting bed bugs involves heated air. The heated air raises the room temperature high enough to kill off the bed bugs. The heated air is readily created by direct fire heaters, propane heaters or burners. Such heaters are presently used at construction sites and along the sidelines at wintry professional football games. The heaters generally burn propane and a fan drives air over the burner for heating. Propane tanks remain an explosion hazard. However, exterminators use heated air to eliminate the bed bugs but are not allowed to bring propane tanks into any building due to fire and building codes.
Additionally, hotel general managers and property owners seek to handle the bed bug infestation highly discretely and very quietly. The propane heaters move the heated air through a flexible duct system to reach the infested rooms. However, flexible ducts running up the stairs and down the corridors in five star hotels are just not permitted. Additionally, re-circulating air from a direct fired heated within an infested room or nearby hallway also is not allowed because the combustion products rise to unsafe levels rapidly.
Avoiding the fire and building code limits and direct fire heaters, today hotels attack bed bug infestations by stripping a room of its furnishings down to the structure, often bare concrete. This extreme method kills off a bedbug infestation but a hotel loses room night revenue and incurs the demolition and re-fitting costs. This method costs over $30,000 per room.
The present invention capitalizes on the advantages of electric infra-red heaters that operate upon 120 volt service that is readily available in an infested room and in adjacent hallways.
A unique aspect of the present infra-red heater assembly is a series of vertical panels with embedded heating elements that raise the ambient air temperature over 140° F. adjacent to a wall of a room.